Ask The Passengers Review

TITLE Ask The Passengers
AUTHOR A.S. King
PUBLICATION October 23rd 2012 by Little, Brown
READ June 10 to 11, 2013
SOURCE Purchased

strid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better.

In this truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions, Printz Honor author A.S. King asks readers to question everything--and offers hope to those who will never stop seeking real love.

Ask The Passengers is the third A.S. King novel that I have had the pleasure of reading. Having read a few in the past I have come to have some pretty high expectations when it comes to her work and this one did not let me down at all. A touching story about identity, love and acceptance this novel had my heart and took me on a journey of discovery.

Astrid Jones is in love with a girl and she doesn’t know what that means. We watch her explore the possibilities and try to figure out what the emotions that she is having mean. I loved the questioning approach to all of this. There were no strong definition lines and through her philosophy projects at school we really get to explore the issue with her deeply. I loved how she applied these projects to what was happening in her life and got into debates with people at school. A.S. King tackled how a teen trying to figure out if she is gay or straight feels as everyone tries to put her into one box or the other. Astrid didn’t know where she belonged, she knew what she was feeling at the time and didn’t know what it meant for the future. I can’t even express enough how I loved that this story stressed that it’s OK to be in the middle and not be sure.

The characterizations here were so strong. In the beginning I actually found that I was having trouble getting into the story, despite that I had an intense hatred for Astrid’s mother and a spot in my heart for Astrid. To me that screams great characterizations, I was having some trouble with the plot, but warmed up to the characters fast. Claire, the mother, was so worried about what everyone thought about her and this feeling extended to much of the small town that the characters were living in. Her favoritism towards her other daughter drove me crazy and her way of ignoring her husband really got to me as well. But Astrid had my love from the beginning. The inner turmoil that she was facing and the pressure from the people around her felt like a weight on my chest and I wanted to help her in any way that I could (even though I couldn’t because it was a book, but that was how into it I was!) We also meet friends of Astrid who are dealing with a lot of the same issues that she was. We see their ups and downs on the path to coming out to the community and it isn’t pretty.

As I mentioned before I did have a settling in period with this one. For about the first 20% I just wasn’t getting into the story as I had expected to. I think that may be due to the strange storytelling that was used to convey the story’s message. As Astrid lies on her picnic table in her backyard she looks up to the sky and watches planes fly by. While she does this she sends all of her love up to the passengers on the planes because she doesn’t know what to do with her love herself. We get short snippets where we are a passenger on the plane and the moment that they feel the love that Astrid sends. This took me out of the story a few times at the beginning because I wasn’t too sure where that element of the story was going but once I got a feel for it and began to understand the meaning I adored those parts. I loved how in the end they really came full circle, it was incredibly heartwarming.

I think this is an important novel and is one that any teen who is questioning their sexual orientation should have available to them. The message conveyed is strong and it definitely has the power to make people feel like they are not alone and that it is OK not to know for sure. I am happy to have gotten to go on this journey with Astrid and thank A.S. King for writing such an important story.

The Dust of 100 Dogs Review

TITLE The Dust of 100 Dogs
AUTHOR A.S. King
PUBLICATION February 8th 2009 by Flux
READ December 24 to 26, 2012
SOURCE Purchased

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

Over the last few months I have come to be a huge fan of author A.S. King. Please Ignore Vera Dietz was one of my favorite reads of last year and following that experience I was quick to add all of her books to my TBR and pick them up. My second foray into her writing was The Dust of 100 Dogs and I can definitely say that this one threw me for a loop. This novel is unlike anything I have ever read and is incredibly ambitious. I think King pulled off something so out there really well even though it had my scratching my head through much of it.

The Dust of 100 Dogs is the tale of Emer’s many lives. We get her story from the 1600’s when she is a girl who has lost her parents and is left to live with her terrible abusive uncle. Once she is of age her uncle sells her off to an Englishman for marriage, uprooting her from the man that she has come to love. Emer, being the strong headed girl that she is though, doesn’t lie down and take it, she escapes and sets to the high seas to become one of the most notorious pirates ever. This part of the story had me feeling very disjointed in the beginning, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the historical element and I really didn’t like Emer as a child. She was whiney and she didn’t listen to anyone. What’s funny though is that the things that I hated about young Emer, were the things that endeared me to and made me connect with adult Emer. She was strong and did what no women at that time could have ever achieved. She was respected amongst the men of her ship and she still managed to get a little pleasing in private.

Emer’s story doesn’t have a happy ending though and at the height of her pillaging she is murdered and cursed to live 100 lives as a dog. I should point out here that the story doesn’t go in order, we get alternating chapters from Emer’s story, little lessons that she learned in her lives as dogs and then we also get Saffron’s story, which I will get to later. So the little lessons that we get from her life as a dog are definitely interesting but are not for the faint of heart. She doesn’t live the happiest of puppy lives and goes through some unimaginable things but they always lead to a pretty good lesson.

The final story we get in this novel is of Saffron. Saffron is who Emer is when she is once again born as a human. She’s a 17-year-old girl growing up with an immense amount of pressure on her shoulders. I really liked the family dynamic of Saffron’s story. Her parents were terrible; her mother a drunk and her father had pretty much no back bone and they put all of their faith in Saffron becoming something and bringing the family out of its hole. I felt stressed reading her story, dealing with the pressure from her parents and struggling to come to terms with her brother’s drug addiction felt like a lot for a 17 year old girl. Not to mention that all Saffron wanted to do was to turn 18 and return to the scene of her death to unearth the treasure she had buried there.

There is a lot going on in this novel, as you can tell, but I think King made it work. It is a daring tale told in an incredibly unique way and I really appreciated that. While this one isn’t garnering 5 stars from me it did solidify my love for her work and I will continue to plow through her novels.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz Review

TITLE Please Ignore Vera Dietz
AUTHOR A.S. King
PUBLICATION October 12th 2010 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
READ November 26 to 27, 2012
SOURCE Purchased

Vera’s spent her whole life secretly in love with her best friend, Charlie Kahn. And over the years she’s kept a lot of his secrets. Even after he betrayed her. Even after he ruined everything.

So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?

Edgy and gripping, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is an unforgettable novel: smart, funny, dramatic, and always surprising.

I picked up Please Ignore Vera Dietz after I pulled it off the shelf at Chapters and saw the blurb from author Ellen Hopkins front and center on the cover. It reads “Brilliant. Funny. Really special.” Upon finishing I have to say that those words can’t even begin to do this novel justice. It is so full of heart, it is so full of heartbreaking realism and it is overflowing with amazing writing. I would sit down with this novel and before I knew it I had devoured 200 pages and it felt like nothing at all.

We meet Vera Dietz who is an 18 year old high school student mourning the sudden loss of her best friend, Charlie. The book starts off as Vera is attending Charlie’s funeral and paying her condolences to his parents. It becomes quite clear right off the bat that there is a mystery surrounding his death and also a darkness surrounding his family. I came to love Vera, like creepy love. I don’t think I have connected to a character in my history of being a reader as I have to her. I felt her loss of Charlie, I felt her loss of her mother and I felt her inner struggle as she pushed herself to cope with it all. I loved that her inner (and outer) dialogue were dripping with dry sarcasm and I adored how smart she was. She struggled with so many things inside, and wasn’t afraid to question authority throughout. She didn’t let Charlie walk all over her and even though that led to her losing him twice it definitely added to her character.

A lot had gone on in her past and the unique way in which the story was told was the perfect medium for revealing the present as well as the past. We are treated to chapters on the present from Vera as well as ones titled “History” that go through different ages and let us know what happened. We also have a few chapters that are a few words from her father, Ken Dietz, and even a few that are words from the dead kid, Charlie. This added a sense of completion to the novel and we were able to see situations from everyone’s perspective which led to an inner struggle in me on who I wanted to side with. I love the way this story was told, while the chapters are relatively short, it was awesome to get different perspectives.

Of course there is some romance in the novel, and while that aspect did have a lot to do with shaping Vera, it never overtook the novel. We know that she loved Charlie, and we get to see the ups and downs of their relationship in the “History” chapters and we also see her budding romance with a guy from work, James. I’m happy that the romance didn’t overtake the plot and that it focused more so on Vera dealing with everything herself. She definitely made some decisions that I didn’t agree with but in the end that just made her more real, nobody makes all the right choices.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz is a poignant story that deals with bullying, abuse, teenage pregnancy, love and first and foremost, loss. I absolutely loved every stunning word of this novel and I will be reading anything by author A.S. King that I can get my hands on. Read this novel people!!!